Dresden Bombing. Holocaust?

In a total war the barrier of our humanity is dangerously lowered. It's not that difficult to accept or understand. What I don't get is the need the shove the shit under the carpet and pretend we were looking after roses.

Hi Chutzpah,

The Soviets, Romanians and Poles WERE Allies in February 1945. Why would they not matter? Indeed, one reason given for the Dresden raid was to support the Red Army.

It is, indeed, difficult to quantify the precise damage done to Germany's ability to sustain the war due to civilian casualties. However, this needn't prevent us asserting with confidence that such casualties were damaging. The high absentee rates of German workers, as opposed to foreign compulsory workers, by 1944, is just one indicator. The diversion of productive manpower into active and passive AA defences is another. The dismal impact on troops at the front is another. All these are well attested if difficult to quantify. A quick read of Goebbels's diaries will show how concerned he was about civilian morale due to the bombing.

So, if one is not enough, how few artillery pieces, tanks, submarines and aircraft would Germany have to have for Dresden's optical industry no longer to be a legitimate target? 10? 100? 1,000? 100,000?

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Imp,

Absolutely wrong. The targetting of cities was not "criminal" in WWII. It remained legal due to the incomplete coverage of international law on the subject of bombing. Anglo-French proposals in 1938 to outlaw it were not supported by Italy, Germany and Japan, who were already engaged in it in Spain and China. That was why nobody, Allied or Axis, was prosecuted for it in WWII.

However, there are severe moral questions to be asked about it. These questions were raised in the British parliament even while the war was still on. As a result it was outlawed in post war international legislation.

That is why to talk in terms of "criminality" in this case in WWII is anachronistic and factually wrong.

However, if one wants to argue that it was morally wrong in WWII, then there is a strong case that may be made.

The enormously high death rates of bomber crews completely undermine your suggestion that bombing was "avoiding military confrontations". For the crews, it was part of one of the three most fatal casualty-inducing forms of military confrontation in WWII. Only kamikazes and U-boat crews faired worse!

Cheers,

Sid.

This reminds me of Irak

Death rates are also pretty high among contemporary suicide-bombers. They risk being caught, shot, and most of them tend to die anyway. So they dont avoid military confrontations, but they do try to hit the soft civilians in order to lower their morale and support for troops fighting thousands of miles away against the suicide-bomber's main forces.

Bombing civilians in WWII was criminal, international law or no international law.
They treated civilians as contributors to the war effort, making them targets. The same thing that terrorists do today. They target civilians that are tax-payers, workers etc.

take care

Hi cipiamon,

Why?

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Imperialist,

No. Not criminal. You are using the word too slackly. The action was not, in the strict sense, criminal as it broke no law.

If you want to use less legally specific words such as immoral, bad, cruel, harsh, wrong, etc., then you can make a case. But the case for legal criminality is a non-starter because the bombing took place in a legal vacuum. That was why it attracted no war crimes trials in WWII.

The "military confrontations" point is yours, not mine. There seems to be some inconsistency in your attitude to terrorists on this. Two posts ago they avoided military confrontations but in your last post suicide bombers don't avoid military confrontations.

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi.

Well, they avoid military confrontations as a strategy, but they could get intercepted on their way to the target by the forces they intend to avoid, and end up being killed/captured and/or killing soldiers, not civilians, so they end up in military confrontations.
Ofcourse there is no 100% comparison between the terrorists and the city-busters, because they use different means and on a different scale, but I think knowingly targetting civilians is what makes them related.

As for the criminal issue someone argued on a thread around here that the Nuremberg trials were unfair because they condemned people on the basis of laws that were not recognised as such at the time of their actual deeds.


I really think it was impossible for the Allies to put on trial the military leaders (their military leaders) that helped them win the war, again, law or no law.

take care

Sid, it remainds me of Irak becouse G. Bush presented Irak targets as big and meen threats, after they conquer it the targets were not so meen and nuclear

Dresden city (not factories) also was considered verry dangerous and it was picked for a massive bombing run, after the they conquer it they found out that the threat was not big... is like a constant.

The past is reflected by the present.

Because you didn't even mention them ?

I will disagree with you on the damaged caused by the raid to the German military so late in the war. You have a point however on refusing to call it a war crime. It was effectively done in a legal vacuum.

We may be splitting hairs here. If the German lawers had suddenly declared it illegal I'm sure the Allied would have had a good laugh. The Germans may have started it but they didn't bomb any American city after all. Whose law do you take in to account to call something legal/illegal during WWII ? Even the GC wasn't a complete reference.

The British as always were more prosaic about it. If the Germans did something wrong they had to be punished. If the Germans did something wrong but the British did it as well, ... then it was ok. So much for the law

Hi Imperialist,

Of course bombers avoided military confrontations with the defence. Why on earth would they fly over the most heavily defended areas to their targets? It defies common sense. It is the aim of all militaries to inflict maximum damage while suffering minimally themselves. Only madmen seek unnecessary casualties.

Yup. It was probably impossible in practical terms for the Allies to put their own senior bombing leaders on trial. But it was perfectly possible for the Allies to put German bombing leaders on trial. They didn't. Indeed, as it was not illegal, they couldn't.

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi cipiamon,

The threat doesn't have to be big. It just has to exist.

I have seen no evidence that Dresden proved to be less of a threat than the Allies believed. Have you? According to German sources, it had at least 127 factories engaged in war production, major railway junctions, stations and yards. It administered about 8% of Germany's military manpower and contained about 20 barracks, depots, etc, including Ersatzheer corps and divisional HQs. It is not much like the WMD situation in Iraq at all.

Cheers,

Sid.

Sure, and targetting civilians to achieve that goal is OK, right?

Hi Chutzpah,

I did mention the Soviets, Poles, Romanians and many more when I wrote "Allies". I fail to see what the issue is here.

There isn't any question that damage was done to the German military by the Dresden raid. However, there is a question, recognised and debated even at the time, as to whether this damage was commensurate with the civilian casualties caused. This is a proper area for debate.

If the Germans (and Italians and Japanese) had agreed to make bombing of cities illegal in 1938 the Anglo-French would have been delighted, because they were at a considerable disadvantage in the air at that time. (Not a very moral position, I know, but a pragmatic one).

Whether the Germans bombed an American city or not is irrelevant. It doesn't matter who started it if it is legal. Nor is it reasonable to expect one ally not to use a legal weapon when other of its allies were suffering from the same weapon. Over the winter of 1939/40 the British and French did not retaliate for the German bombing of Warsaw and other Polish cities. It did them no good.

The Hague and Geneva Conventions were the basis of the laws of war in WWII. They only specified that a besieged city couldn't be bombed from balloons, because at the time the relevant paragraph was written no heavier-than-air machine had yet flown.

What are you referring to in your last paragraph?

It should be pointed out that all the belligerents had a legal device available that could have prevented their cities being bombed - they could have declared them "Open". However, this would have meant closing down their military factories, removing their garrisons, depots, all artillery, etc., and not allowing the transit of troops thereafter. Belgrade was declared "Open" by the Yugslavs, but still bombed by the Germans. The Hungarians intended to declare Budapest "Open" in March 1944, but the Germans occupied the country to prevent it. The Germans made no attempt to declare any of their cities "Open" at any stage.

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Imp,

Are you talking legal OK or moral OK?

Cheers,

Sid.